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Topshop and Tiffany's

Posted July 18, 2011

My teenage niece and her friend paid a whistle stop visit to London last week. They were on a shopping mission.

We started off, on the hottest day of the summer so far, with a pilgrimage to Topshop’s flagship store on Oxford Circus. After tagging along with them for the first hour or so, I decamped to the nearest coffee shop and waited until they resurfaced from their basement cocoon, blinking in the sunlight.

They were laden with carrier bags and had built up an oily slick of sweat by the time they reached me. My own makeup had begun to melt in the searing heat and was sliding down my face. We must have looked a treat as we headed off for the next shop on their aspirational to do list – Abercrombie and Fitch.

Can I just say that this is not the place to go to if you are sweaty or unkempt. Only ‘beautiful people’ are allowed to work there (seriously, they recruit them especially) so we immediately felt we were letting the side down. There were dozens of these perfect specimens of humankind but, annoyingly, they spent most of their time congregating in the doorways and chatting amongst themselves. We literally had to squeeze past them to get anywhere near the clothes. Mind you, it only took a slight brush from one of our sweaty thighs for the beautiful people to leap out of the way in horror, as if they had been assailed by a giant snail. The verdict from my niece and her friend when we left the shop? “Abercrombie and Fitch is overrated and it’s so obvious that the staff are just pretending to like you.”

So where did they want to go next? Tiffany’s, to look at the diamonds! I strongly believe that it’s important to sow the quality appreciation seeds as early as possible in life, so I felt it was my duty to take the girls to Tiffany’s. It was only when we were inside that I remembered we looked as if we’d crawled off the beach and were in need of a good hosing down. But I shouldn’t have worried. From the doorman who greeted them to the sales staff who managed to keep a straight face as they earnestly enquired about engagement ring settings, all the staff treated them with grace and respect.

The girls had a wonderful first experience of Tiffany’s. And as we trudged our way back to the tube station, I overheard my niece’s friend comment that it really was just like in the film, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. “So cool!” replied my niece.